Separated at Death (The Lakeland Murders)

by Salkeld, J J

  Robinson nodded. But he didn’t look best pleased. A nice quick, clean result, the kind that could be summed up in an email to the Chief, now looked like nothing better than a distant possibility.

  Hall called the team together and briefed them on the day’s events. ‘Let’s eliminate Ryan or get him charged as fast as we can, so top priority is to check out his story. But let’s not drop our other lines of enquiry completely. So can we be sure that we’ve properly eliminated the parents and close family?’

  ‘The mum, step-dad and the other daughter were at home, no visitors but the kid was online pretty much the whole time, and the mum was on Facebook at about nine pm’ said Jane Francis. ‘The techies have looked at the entries and her past usage and say it’s her all right. And the dad you know already: nothing solid there either way.’

  ‘Have we looked at his browsing history?’

  ‘He told us he wasn’t online that evening, so no, not so far.’ Jane made a note to do it.

  ‘OK. And what about other family members, the brother for instance?’

  ‘I took him boss’ said Dixon, flicking back in his notebook. ‘In Manchester on business all day, got back to Kendal around 8pm, and went straight home to Windermere. Says his wife can confirm.’

  ‘Have you asked her?’

  ‘Not yet boss. I was going to check it out after we’ve moved forward with Ryan. I was assuming that you were going to want us to door-to-door again tonight to see if his story stacks up.’

  ‘Are you volunteering, Ray?’

  ‘Is there overtime in it boss?’ he shot back. A few people laughed.

  ‘All right’ said Hall, smiling too. Dixon had joined when being a cop was a job, hardly ever a career. ‘Tasks for tonight then people. Me and Ian will meet SOCO, I assume they areen routeto the old woodyard?’ Mann nodded confirmation. ‘Good. Ray, you take door-to-door since you’re so keen, and I’ll see what I can do about a bit of overtime. Jane, can you co-ordinate the CCTV of Ryan’s route? At least you’ll be looking at a different screen for a few hours that way. But let’s do what we can to stand Ryan’s story up, or else break it down. And as quick as we can please.’

  Hall went to his office to get his coat. It looked chilly outside, although at least it wasn’t raining. Mann followed him in and closed the door.

  ‘What do you think, boss?’

  ‘Well Robinson would like it to be him all right.’ Hall paused, and looked at Mann. ‘That would just fit perfectly with his view of the world. But you know Ryan as well as anyone here, what do you think?’

  ‘Honestly? Not a chance. I’d put my pension on it. Ryan’s an absolute little scumbag, and I’m sure he’s going to keep us all busy for the rest of his life, but I reckon he just didn’t care enough to kill Amy, whatever she said or did that night. Don’t get me wrong, I could absolutely see him giving one of his so-called mates a beating and it going too far, but that would be over status, drugs, money or possibly all three. But I just don’t believe that Ryan could make an emotional connection with anyone on this planet, so the chances of some kind of crime of passion are next to nil. I don’t want to come over all Jeremy Kyle, but that’s how I see it.’

  Hall couldn’t remember the last time that Mann had said so much in one go, and he reckoned that it might be a good while before it happened again.

  ‘And he doesn’t care because no-one has ever cared about him?’ asked Hall.

  ‘Maybe. But I really wouldn’t know about that.’

  ‘OK, but what if he did do it, and the motive was something else? Maybe not robbery, because she still had a few quid in her purse, and even Ryan isn’t in that low a league just yet anyway. But, like you say, we do know that he’s completely amoral, and that’s putting it kindly. He had no intention of helping us, even though he knew that not coming forward would look bad for him later. Even Ryan must know how a DNA test works. He must know he’s on the register. So why did he keep quiet? And remember that this lad has no worries about pushing drugs to young kids on his own estate. So I’m not absolutely sure that there’s anything that he’s truly incapable of. Are you?’

  Mann didn’t reply, but got up, stretched, and went to get his coat. Hall stayed where he was and smiled to himself when Mann had gone.

  Ten minutes later the two men were standing outside the old woodyard. The remains of the old yard itself was overgrown, and some of the unkempt trees were fifteen feet tall. Nature was certainly well on the way to reclaiming the place from the circular saw. A ramshackle building, little more than a long lean-to with a partially collapsed roof, was barely visible in the fading light.

  ‘Young love, eh?’ said Hall, as they stood looking into the yard. A few small, granular snowflakes were being blown about on the breeze.

  ‘When I was a young kid this place was still working’ said Mann. ‘I can just remember it. The smell especially, and the noise from the saws.’

  Tonto picked his way through the undergrowth to meet them. He looked happier than when Hall had last seen him.

  ‘Afternoon gents. I’ve had a good look round inside, and forensics are at it now. But I think I can tell you a couple of things right off. First, there’s absolutely no sign of any struggle, nor of anyone being removed from in there by force. It looks to me as if your two lovebirds were the only recent visitors, so I’m pretty confident. And there’s nothing out here to suggest otherwise either.’

  ‘So if Ryan killed Amy, you think we can be sure that it wasn’t here?’

  ‘Yes, pretty sure. If he’d killed her in there and then carried the body out we’d see signs of that, and there aren’t any. Plus, he’d have to have the strength to carry or drag a 55 kilo dead weight quite a way through the undergrowth.’

  ‘Have you followed the most obvious routes from here to the locus?’ asked Hall.

  ‘Just the first ten metres, but I’ll have a good look from now until it gets dark, and of course we’ll put the dogs through first. Have you got Ryan’s jacket for them?’

  Mann held up an evidence bag that he’d brought from the car, and handed it over to Tonto.

  ‘Do you want to have a look inside? That’s where the action was.’

  ‘No’ said Hall, ignoring Tonto’s laboured joke, ‘I don’t think it will tell us anything that the video and the stills won’t. What I want to know is this. If Amy didn’t die here, then can we prove that she left of her own volition and walked to the woods? And if so, which way did she go? It was pitch dark, so it must have been back to the road, then up into the woods, surely? She was a teenager, and it’s only middle-aged folk who carry a torch in their car.’

  ‘I can’t help with that’ said Tonto. ‘If she’d been wearing high heeled shoes I might have been able to, because the ground is pretty soft here and in the woods, but she was wearing flat pumps.’

  ‘OK. One thing though’ said Mann. ‘I suppose she might have used her phone’s screen as a torch, and whoever killed her maybe took it to use it for the same reason, as they left the woods.’

  Hall looked blank.

  ‘There’ll be an app for that’ said Tonto, helpfully.

  The two policemen walked back to Hall’s car, and got in. For a second Hall felt a very strong impulse to tell Mann about what had happened with his wife, but he didn’t. Despite the amount of time they spent together, both inside and outside work, he just couldn’t bring himself to say anything. Maybe he felt that it would be a sign that he wasn’t properly focussed on the job in hand. And even if he did talk to Mann what good what it do? One of the things that all policemen learn, quite early on, is that talking too much is usually what gets you into trouble.

  Hall drove to M&S on the way back to the station, and he had to drive round the car park twice before he found a space. Mann almost pointed out that a couple of disabled bays were free, but changed his mind. Hall asked what Mann wanted to eat, then went inside. He couldn’t remember the last time that a colleague had asked for nothing but fruit, but while he was buying Mann’s
bananas and grapes he picked up a fruit salad for himself. Might make a nice change, he thought.

  Ryan sat in his cell and tried to relax. He was frightened, though he’d done his best to make sure that none of the coppers knew that. So he forced himself to just sit and wait.

  Over the years Ryan had learned quite a bit about the police, and one of the things he’d learned was that they were lazy. Ryan thought of all the times he’d been nicked, always for something he’d done, and the cops made loads of fuss, and told him how serious it all was. And then, weeks or months later, he’d only had a caution, or maybe a visit from some social worker. By the time he was a teenager he pretty much knew that as far as the system was concerned he was part hassle, part lost cause, and that no-one would bother him too much, so long as he didn’t cross the line. And while he still wasn’t certain exactly where that line was drawn, he was pretty certain which side the murder of a rich teenage girl would fall.

  So this was serious, no doubt about that. But after half an hour or so Ryan started to calm down a bit. Then he started to think about the wider picture, because what with getting stopped with those drugs in the car, and now all this, Ryan knew that he’d be the centre of the cops’ attention for years to come. And that’s not how it had used to be. He used to be just one of a dozen or more of the usual suspects. So what had changed? He’d been dealing for Wayne for years, but it was Adam’s appearance on the scene that had coincided with all this trouble.

  Could Adam be responsible for any of it? That big plain clothed copper had as good as told him that he’d been grassed up, although Ryan didn’t believe a word he’d said: it was probably just yet another coppers’ wind-up. They were always lying. But the more Ryan thought about it the stranger it seemed. Hadn’t one of those traffic coppers said that the car was legal? So why had they really stopped him?

  And now that Ryan came to really think about it, in the quiet of an empty afternoon custody suite, he knew for certain that Adam wasn’t like him, and hadn’t grown up on the same kind of estate. So why was he involved in the drug job? Didn’t rich people have legal ways of stealing from you?

  And so Ryan came to a decision. When he got out of there he was going to put that £500 to good use, and he was going to spend it finding Adam. With his decision made he did his best to relax, and waited for the door to swing open, as he was quite certain it soon would.

  Hall had spent the last hour doing his budgetary paperwork, and he wasn’t unhappy when Jane Francis knocked on his door. Hall beckoned her to come in and sit down.

  ‘Have you had anything to eat Jane?’

  ‘Not yet boss, I’ve been looking at the CCTV from Kendal and Oxenholme stations.’

  Hall reached into the bag by the side of his desk.

  ‘I bought some bits earlier. Care to join me and we can talk as we eat? Fancy a fruit salad?’

  They sat at the meeting table and Hall shared out the food he’d bought. They had half of the sandwich each, then he went and got a couple of plastic cups from the water dispenser and poured out the smoothie.

  ‘Thanks boss, this is just what I needed.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. I know from experience that keen young detectives always forget to eat when they’re on their first investigation.’

  ‘Not so much of the young please boss, I’ll be hitting the big 4-0 very soon.’

  Hall was never sure if the done thing was to look surprised at such revelations, so he took a cautious bite of sandwich and said, ‘so I suppose we’ve got young Ryan at both stations, at the times he said?’

  ‘He was certainly at Kendal station, and at Oxenholme too. And we see him getting on the Carlisle train there. I haven’t seen the footage from the carriage yet, but I’ll be amazed if he didn’t go all the way. To Carlisle I mean.’

  Hall knew what she meant. ‘Have we got him going through town on his bike?’

  ‘Not for certain, but a lad on a BMX did go down at just the right time, so I’m confident that we’ll have him all the way from the town centre to Carlisle station by tomorrow.’ Jane took a sip of smoothie. ‘So is that Ryan off the hook then boss?’

  ‘Not for definite, but realistically he’d have to have been in the woods with Amy before half-eight if he was going to kill her and still get down through town for the train. I called the doc earlier to see if a time of death as early as that was possible. He said no, he didn’t see anything earlier than 9pm being remotely likely.’

  ‘Can he be absolutely certain though?’

  ‘No, I suppose not, but if it comes to it he’ll say, under oath, that he doubts the likelihood of the latest possible time of death that we could possibly suggest if it’s Ryan who is in the dock. He’s as good as given the lad an alibi in fact, whether Ryan knows it or not.’

  ‘So he’s home free, at least for now.’

  ‘Well, we’re certainly going to have to turn him loose later on tonight, unless Ray Dixon and his merry band of door-knockers come up with anything new. And I doubt that will happen. We’ve had sod all luck with door-to-door so far.’

  Jane glanced up at her boss. She’d been told that he was hard to read, and he was. A man who played his cards close, she thought, and briefly wondered why. ‘So even if Ryan is our man, we can’t prove it?’

  ‘That’s right, we’re nowhere even close. We’re bound to find matching fibres on his clothes, and soil from the woodyard on his trainers, but we’d expect that. In fact they corroborate what he’s told us. So the question for now isn’t whether or not we can charge him, or prove that he’s our man, but whether or not we actually believe that he did it. Because that will make a huge difference as to how we move on from here.’

  ‘So what do you reckon boss? From what I hear Ryan is a right little shitbag.’

  ‘Yes he is, and nasty with it. Don’t get me wrong, it would give me great pleasure to put him away, and Ian Mann would be absolutely made up. Well, as pleased as Ian ever gets, anyway. The Super still thinks the fact that Ryan didn’t come forward is as good as an admission, but I think he’s been behind a desk too long. The days of the honest, hard working professional villain are long gone, if they ever existed outsideMinder, and I don’t think it means a thing that Ryan kept his head down until now. Ryan loathes us, just like he’s hated every authority figure since his first social worker. And Ian Mann doesn’t rate him for it at all. So honestly, I just don’t know. But my gut feeling is that we need to keep looking.’

  Jane Francis got up, tidied up the packaging, put it all back in the carrier bag, neatly tied it closed, and put the lot in Hall’s bin. He knew that he would have just left it all on the table for the cleaners.

  At eleven o’clock that night Hall decided to let Ryan go, and he emailed the custody suite to let them know. And he sent an update email to Robinson. He wouldn’t be pleased, but he knew the score. They couldn’t even contemplate charging Ryan, and he wasn’t the type to make a run for it. Hall doubted that he’d ever been to London, and since he’d probably never had a family holiday in his life he’d probably never been abroad either. Hall wrote ‘Ryan - passport?’ on his pad as a reminder for the morning, then got up, stretched, and made for the door.

  Saturday, December 11th

  Hall slept better, and didn’t wake ‘till after six. But still he awoke from a disturbing dream. He remembered a figure, back to him and entirely in shadow, with blood dripping from the ends of its fingers. Then he was running through a door and down some stairs. It seemed to be a block of flats, because he ran down several flights before suddenly stopping, dropping to his knees and clinging to the railings. As he looked up in fear he could still see the treads rising above him, but somehow he knew that just below him the stairs ended, and the sky began.

  He lay for a moment after he woke, and the terror faded. He thought back on the previous night. He hadn’t seen his wife or the kids when he got home, and he was glad. He had been completely exhausted, so mentally and physically tired that he really wouldn’t have known wh
at to say. Even to his own children.

  It was after seven by the time he reached the office, and hardly anyone was in. The atmosphere was subdued, but it was always like that after a setback in a major investigation. Even so Hall had barely had time to open his email inbox and skim their contents than Mann appeared at the door.

  ‘I hear that Ryan is back home again?’

  ‘Yes. If the PM is reliable then we can’t place him at the scene when Amy died.’

  ‘But is it reliable?’

  ‘Now you, Ian, are surely destined for high rank in this police force. Because I’ve just this second read an email from the Super asking just that very question. He suggests that we should ask a Home Office pathologist to go through the Doc’s numbers, work and conclusions.’

  ‘He won’t like that. So will you do it?’

  ‘Yes. I would have done it anyway, because the timeline is so tight. The Doc can squeal all he likes, but time of death is the only thing that’s keeping us seriously doubting whether Ryan was the last person but one to see Amy alive, rather than the very first one to see her dead.’

  ‘Well, you know what I think boss.’

  ‘I do Ian, and for what it’s worth I think you’re probably right. What’s the motive for Ryan? He wasn’t off his head on drugs that night, we know that. And none of the God knows how many social workers who have assessed him have ever suggested any mental health issues. What you said was spot on I reckon, that kid is emotionally dead. Our friends with psychology degrees will probably tell us that it’s down to his upbringing, and a lack of parental affection, and they’ve very probably right. He liked the girl, but I doubt he’d have thought twice if she’d given him the push that night. He’d have just found himself a new squeeze. And what I find sad is that I doubt he meant all that much to Amy either, because she hadn’t even told her friends about him. She may have had a picture of him on her phone of course, but until we find it we can’t know.’